Businessman Alin Burcea, owner of Paralela 45, the biggest Romanian-held travel agency on the Romanian market, says that if he had more money, he would start buying, but the 1m-euro budget he has now does not allow him to buy more rivals on the market.
"For the time being, we're waiting, we haven't come to any agreement with the ones we talked to. Had I more money, I'd buy as much as possible," stated Burcea.
Moreover, since the start of the year Burcea has decided to close an agency in Suceava, to limit expansion at franchises, has laid off 15 of the 180 employees and has drawn up a 2009 budget including a turnover decrease to around 45-48m euros, from 52m euros in the previous year.
"(...) Panic is not good, it's the biggest problem we can have. I've already sealed contracts with charter operators for this year, I've prepared special offers, though on certain segments, such as ticketing, we'll post decline of 10%," he said.
Burcea defines this year as the year when luxury has become cheaper, in that tourists will find packages during certain periods at even half the original price, but that will happen only on certain destinations, in certain periods and particularly for cultural tours.
For 2009, Paralela 45 has already contracted two charters for Antalya during April-June period, a charter for Costa Brava, one for Mallorca (the only new destination this year), one for Crete and Rhodes, as well as a charter for Nice.
Burcea says the company has to be balanced this year and operate with destinations already checked out during previous years.
"(...) I'll stick to previous years' destinations and I maintained the same number of planes and of seats, of around 40,000," he said.
Also, Burcea has cut the number of employees by 15 since the start of January, from almost 180 at a national level. "We won't make any further restructuring moves, except the current ones, which have been necessary," he said.
Despite all the plans he has made for this year, Burcea maintains that nobody can know or make projections about this year's trend until autumn, when they see whether holiday packages were sold or not.
Burcea, who put his travel agency at 18-20m euros in 2008, also owns several hospitality businesses.
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